HCI systems manufacturer uSens, Inc. announced the availability of uSensAr, a smartphone augmented reality engine, this week at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. uSensAR is designed to run optimally on lower-end Android hardware, including systems with lower-resolution cameras and comparatively underpowered CPUs.

“ARcore currently only serves about 30 million Android phones, which is just five percent of the entire Android smartphone ecosystem,” said Dr. Yue Fei, uSens CTO and co-founder.

The company indicated their platform could expand the reach of AR technologies to an estimated two billion smartphones.

“With the release of uSensAR, we are allowing developers, smartphone manufacturers, and content creators to build those AR experiences not just for iPhone, Pixel and Samsung S8 users… but for the entire Android ecosystem,” he continued.

The uSensAR platform will support Unity, C++ and Java. An SDK will be released by the middle of this year.

Concurrently, the company announced a partnership with Spreadtrum Communications, who will reportedly integrate uSens’ technology in their upcoming Spreadtrum SC9853 chipset platform. The partnership is expected to empower augmented reality for hundreds of millions of users.

Spreadtrum, a division of China-based Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd., is a fabless semiconductor company that specializes in creating mobile chipsets for feature phones, smartphones, and other consumer electronics.

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A multi-talented theoretician, software architect and polymath, Reece K. Sellin specializes in the development of cloud-based marketing automation platforms, business applications and middleware. He also consults extensively in the areas of IT and media.

His varied career has seen him excel in areas including open source software development (founding the Freedows OS project in 1996); traditional and electronic media (in managerial roles in the e-zine, traditional magazine and newspaper industries); and political advocacy (focusing on policy reform to the long-term-care system in British Columbia, Canada).